“PELTING OF DIRT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1940, Page 4

“PELTING OF DIRT”

BANNED BY MR SPEAKER WARNING IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. EXCHANGES ON PUBLIC WORKS POLICY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. A warning that, there would be “no pelting of dirt about" while he was in the chair was issued by the Speaker, Mr Barnard, following exchanges between Mr Juil (Opposition. Waipawa) and the Minister of Public Works, Mr Semple, during the former's speech in the debate in the House of Representatives on the Public Works Statement. Mr Jull said he could quote an instance where the Minister had constructed 10 miles of road in his electorate which was unnecessary. Mr Semple: “The honourable member asked men to build a road to his own property and a lot of people thought that was unjustified.” > Mr Speaker intervened at that stage to issue his warning. Mr Jull. later in his speech, emphasised that nothing he had ever said was in any way a reflection on the Minister himself, or the engineers and staff of the Main Highways Board. He was criticising the policy enunciated by the Minister. “They can cut out all the work in my electorate, as far as I am concerned," Mr Jull said. “They have cut most of it out anyway.” He alleged that the Government was showing “very petifogging meanness” in handling the question of control of the old road over the Paekakariki Hill. Mr Jull criticised the Minister’s policy of largely using borrowed money for road construction work and, paying the interest on it from the petrol tax. In a very short time this would lead to disaster to that fund. Tn-* terest was now absorbing a very large percentage of the petrol tax and today there was a very substantial reduction in the revenue from that tax. While most of the overhead bridges the Minister was building were very much needed, Mr Jull said, quite a number of them were distinctly luxurious and unnecessary when the state of the traffic on some roads was taken into account. The policy had been inaugurated some 12 years ago, and the Minister had accelerated it. “The Minister should reduce the amount of borrowing and reduce the amount of construction work,” Mr Jull added.